I always prefer to suggest new bonus for weak civs rather than “stealing” existing ones, unless are broken for that civ or have already been removed, like old koreans faster fortifications.
Anyway, having faster walling vills is still an eco buff, as it means less time on building and more time on gathering resources.
An “uncompleted” thought I had about Italians is to change up their aging up Bonus a bit:
Instead of the 15 % discount they need 150 less Food to age up.
Ofc this would need some compensations on water as we all know how snowbally water is. Potentially a change to the Fishing Ship bonus.
and @DoctBaghi
This hhere might be the right thread for your interest in “fixing” italians. Though I have to say Italians is a really complicated one. As the civ in it’s current design has really strong potential and is “only” held back by the weak eco.
That said when I play them I often get the feeling that the potential we speak about often just doesn’t come effectively into play. That’s also what makes it so complicated. In theory Italians should be great in a lot of settings, practically they often just don’t deliver even if you get to their lategame. And I also think, that one reason for that is, that there are still a lot of civs which I consider stronger lategame powerhouses. Like Bohemians eg.
I perfectly agree with your statement.
Italians have great latent potential, but it’s hard to get it out in most games, and that explains why it’s considered a solid or even strong civ by pro, and a weak civ for everybody else.
Pros can really maximize the use of a cheaper age up and leverage that into an incredible advantage that their late game composition is, while lower elo player can still benefit from the cheaper age up (nobody dislike extra resources) but lack the ability to leverage it, and fells like the lack something after aging up, thus the feeling of a weak eco.
That being said, we should find something that allows the lower player to still reach that late game potential without making the civ too strong for the competitive scene.
I disagree on that, having feudal age cost only 350 food is too strong, even if you completely remove the discount on fishing ships.
They nerfed the +150 starting food for lithuanians food exactly because it was too strong, so I don’t think that they’ll give it to the Italians something of the same value.
What they need is something small, something that allows player to “connect” the discount on feudal age ti the discount on castle age.
I think 30% longer lasting berries should fix the problem of Italians early game.
Italians getting minor buff is fine. Long lasting berries is too strong, delaying wood consumption in both land and water maps. Strong naval civs getting good wood discount (portuguese) is not very nice indeed.
Extending 15% discount to all TC research and 33% discount to market tech may come in handy.
But both discounts wouldn’t help Italians much…
For 1v1 market techs only guilds are useful, which came in very late, as for 15% cheaper TC techs, it would help mostly with WB and HC, and both come in late too.
A idea could be:
or:
I personally prefer the first one if we have to give them an eco bonus.
It’s not. Lithuanian Bonus could be used just to get a faster up time. But didn’t had to. Especially on hybrid maps the Lithuanian bonus was so strong because it wasn’t bound to the aging up specifically.
And tbh I don’t even think Lith bonus was “too strong”. Devs nerfed it at a time it was already super established in the meta and nobody really complained about. Yes it was a strong bonus, but I can’t remember any calls for nerfs at that stage.
That said, ofc there would be the option to make it like 125 F cheaper aging up for Italians or so. This would be on the “safe side”. But this wouldn’t encourage “picking” Italians that much.
I always think that any of these buffs should be designed to be a bit more “bold” and “risky”, so there is an immidiate encouragement for the community to try push the new boni to the limits. Cause then you can see the immidiate effect like 1-2 patches later and don’t have “creeping” bonusses which only show their OP-ness later on - when the civ already is branded as “low card” - then people start complaining cause they don’t accept “low card” civs with cheesy strats to be competitive. (Yes I’m talking about Celts just as one example for that)
Without offence, but that matters little… if you want to suggest bonuses to improve the Italians that can actually made to the game you should look at prior examples of bonuses, buffs and nerfs.
The fact is that the lithuanians bonus was nerfed, because it was deemed too strong, so suggestions something similar for another civ, unless there are other differences that justify it (which is not the case since we are talking about dark age) it’s just a ticket to be ignored by the balance team.
In the dark age, having +150 food straight or having to click up with 150 food less it’s not a big difference to be honest. Yeah you might not be able to dock right away but you’ll still age up so fast that it hardly matters.
Ok I can agree on that, but it cannot be too “bold”.
By the way, probably a new bonus would attract people towards Italians more than a rework of an old one.
What if the bonus of Advancing to the next Age is 15% cheaper is change to By advancing to the next Age you will recover 30% resources spent:
Not necessarily, but I can see why you want it for Italians.
My issue with that for italians in the early game is, that I find their cheaper aging up bonus quite culturally fitting. The Italian Renaissance was the driving motor for a cultural revolution and should be reflected in the game. And that’s why I like the cheaper aging up bonus.
What I think is a bit weird is the cheaper gunpowder. I rather would like to see italians having earlier access to FU Gunpowder like Turks or Bohemians. Especially interesting cold be BBC in Castle age. Though ofc they need to be much weaker there to be balanced. But that would be really interesting.
And fitting, as Italains were kinda leading in the implementation of cannons in their warfare.
The cheaper Gunpowder would actually fit Spanish way, way better.
Two interesting UT that would fit Italians also:
Piastre: Basically Plate Armor. Gives Italian Knights extra armor. Similar to the current effect of Hauberk. And Hauberk instead effects Infantry which is more fitting.
Trace Italienne: Increases the Hitpoints of Castles
As the current Italian UTs are kinda underwhealming and also not really reflecting Italy as a whole. Silk Road would fit way better with a potential Venice civ than a general Italian civ. And Pavise in it’s current effect… kinda useless. If it doesn’t make the Archers more durable against the biggest counters in skirms and siege.
And longer lasting berries… It’s a really sad bonus imo. By the time this would come into play you want to have farm eco anyways. It’s not a good bonus at all in a meta where most “good” archer civs already delay the mill to get better timings.
Faster gathering food allows you to divert more food villagers to wood to build more fishing ships or age faster and get military out sooner. Longer-lasting food is not that useful on water maps because you have fishing ships and the demand for food is significantly less. Compared to Italians I would have considered Portuguese to be the better civ on land maps prior to the berries bonus. so giving Italians a much less significant buff shouldn’t be a problem.
TC
Age discount changed from 15% to 15%/20%/25% food in Feudal/Castle/Imperial can be a minor but impactful bonus imo.
Look, I’m all in favour of buffing Italians. I think they are an excellent civ, and I love their UU.
However, this is not just you being a elitist, it’s ### ##### # ###############
Nobody cares about water maps? I do. 1% of games are played on water maps, and around 15% are on nomad maps. That’s at least 2000 people who do play water.
Why do you want to ruin the experience for 2000 people? Just come up with something which does work. Yeah, water balance ###### ### that doesn’t mean you should make it worse. Also, consider all the tournaments which have water maps. All the recent ones except 1-map tournaments has had at least 1 water map.
Also, italians are not the close to being the worst land civ. There are at least half a dozen other contenders for that position.
Now, looking at their win rate by time graph, we see that their early-mid game is a huge weakness. Their age up bonus just isn’t doing enough. But that brings us to another problem; Italians need a special build order to properly utilize their age up bonus. This is a problem, especially till you get high elos because people just aren’t going to remember those. Malay faced a similar issue for a long time. I don’t see any solution to this.
Some sort of defensive bonus should be the most appropriate here, considering that eco ones might send them over the edge on water maps.
New Malay bonus fixed it. Maybe free archer armor would work for Italians if Koreans wouldn’t get it. And honestly I believe there is room for swap. Koreans after their latest buff, will be fine even if the bonus is removed.
Free archer armor is kinda a defensive bonus imo.
Italians were the first to mix in hand cannons in infantry composition, especially cesare borgia was a precursor for the pike and shot tactic, but besides that they were late on implement field artillery, that’s why they lack the SE, although the Italians were pioneers in the siege development.
But history aside, in my opinion italians have the most viable siege. I would prefer to have cheaper age ups + cheaper chemistry + cheaper gunpowder units rather then bohemians and turk bonuses, which yes have stronger units, but it’s harder to reach out to a critical mass.
I too agree that italians are at a point where either you have a remake of them like Indians, or just give them a small tailored bonus to help them out.
Ok this is one of the rare cases where I don’t care about balance I just want ITALIANS TO HAVE THE BOMBARD CASTLE.
I like pavise, especially since it’s cheaper, I would just have it affects pikemen as well, just for being a bit all rounded and historically accurate.
Silk road is kinda meh… but every time I think of changing it I remember that italians are already quite strong on imp, and so I can’t find a reason to make them even stronger.
Only switching the 2 UTs (and having a way of giving archers mroe armor early on) would solve that, so then you can change silk road or have a secondary effect, but again we are close to a rework more than a buff.
Probably then they would need generic archers, because bonuses for both archers and knights are a bit too much…
For how much my heart would desire than, I think that we will never have a venetian civ…
Anyway, despite the later roadbump, I think that we should look at the aoe3 italians civ, as it’s quite unique an historically accurate, and even just renaming the genoese crossbowman to pavisier would be nice.
No it isn’t. It’s because people don’t know how to play them, you spend less TC idle time which means more Vils, so what if you reach castle age sooner with less Res, by the time you would reach the normal timing for castle, you should have even more Res and a vil lead.
You’re simply repeating something you’ve heard without understanding it. Like people complaining that Saracens have a bad eco.
Not against this, just don’t see it making much of a difference on the maps they’re bad on, where tempo is the bigger issue.
Buffing petards (which should happen and they should be classed as gunpowder anyway) buffs them more on arena/closed maps anyway, and does almost nothing for the maps they’re bad on.
Even if that’s what you prefer statistics show which one is actually better. The speed with which Turk/bohemians can get their BBC is the most important of all. If you were to exclude that then maybe there would be more of a comparison, but because they can both get BBC so quickly they can eliminate/snowball much sooner, meaning the discount doesn’t matter
Italians also lack siege engineers, which really hurts their overall capability. So you’re getting it later and it’s worse. I would much rather have ########## ### over Italians, nevermind bohe or Turk.
Pavise needs to be in castle age because they have so little going for them, so even though silk road sucks coming in so late, the alternative has always been to make pavise a civ bonus that applies from castle age. But I like the idea of it affecting pikes as well. As a UT I think it’s too lacklustre considering the civ it’s on, and how niche it is. iirc it only applies Vs xbow on xbow fights. Almost nothing else is actually affected, and even then it’s a smaller impact than other civ bonuses/UTs.
I’ll give him the benefit of doubt. He may misunderstand Dark Age to Feudal Age where it is impossible to have resource lead even with 2 extra villagers.
Buff age up bonus from 15% to 20%. Remove 15% cheaper fishing ship bonus. I think this actually will result in an over all nerf in water and hybrid maps.
In reality, in my opinion it’s a nerf, because while it’s more resources in an absolute value, the bonus doesn’t allow you to actually click up sooner, and so it’s a less flexible bonus.
If you time it correctly, you can get BBC faster with Italians, because you can age up faster, and you’ll still have resources to afford chemistry and the BBC or HC. You’ll even have condos as a meatshield if you need.
Bohemians and turks can get HC in castle age and get chemistry faster if you have a prolonged castle age, but in a imp rush to gunpowder Italians wins in my opinion.
It does and it’s a pity for the uni discount, but you are still getting 1 BBC for free every 4.
Yes of course, I meant in a case where something else buff your military.
Pavise isn’t bad, since it’s also cheaper now, and silk road while it’s niche, it doesn’t bother me, as italians are already good in imp.
I would consider it to be a buff overall free resources upon aging up gives you allows you to afford much-needed upgrades and units to make your opponent really feel the powerspike. Compared to the Ethiopians this gives you 150f/240f,60g/300f,240g almost a straight upgrade. Also this bonuses is better on Arena being able to click up to fuedal faster doesn’t really matter so you’re up 75F for free. upon reaching castle age you have received 390F/60G which could easily use spend to reach imperial age sooner. you might reach imp a bit later but you would have received 690F 300G total for a brutal imperial age power spike.
